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How Cryptic/PWE can make STO more Star Trek
sirsitsalot
Member Posts: 2,803 Arc User
It's really quite simple:
1 - They need to WATCH STAR TREK
2 - They need to make the game like what they see in Star Trek.
People on these forums like to throw things out there like, "What exactly is Star Trek?" whenever someone says the game needs to be more Star Trek. And yes, qualitatively speaking, Star Trek is many things to many people. However, quantitatively speaking, Star Trek is what you see in the shows. The types of stories that are told. The methods by which the stories are told, and all of the tangible elements that make it all up. I'm talking about the things which are evident in the shows, regardless of what aspect of Star Trek appeals to any given individual for whatever reason.
No developer can successfully deliver a qualitatively accurate Star Trek game. However, it can deliver a quantitatively accurate one. As it is now, Cryptic/PWE is not putting any effort into this. Everything they do of late is a poorly disguised gimmick to suck more money out of players' bank accounts. Yes. They are a business and they need to make money. Fine. I get that. But if they are going to bank on the Star Trek IP, then they should be doing the best they can to reflect the IP as accurately as possible. This game still has a subscription option. They should be doing what they originally sounded like they were going to do. Design their marketing model in such a way that people would be encouraged to subscribe for the most cost-effective way to get access to everything, while allowing those to just dabble or go in just so far with their investment to be able to do so. Now it doesn't matter whether we are subscribed or not. The game is designed to entice us into opening our wallets again and again... Not for vanity items or whatnot. But to simply be able to participate in Cryptic's idea of fun gameplay without being subjected to grindfest after grindfest.
Now it is their game. They can design it however they want. But speaking only for myself, if they want my money, then Star Trek Online needs to at least quantitatively be Star Trek, online.
1 - They need to WATCH STAR TREK
2 - They need to make the game like what they see in Star Trek.
People on these forums like to throw things out there like, "What exactly is Star Trek?" whenever someone says the game needs to be more Star Trek. And yes, qualitatively speaking, Star Trek is many things to many people. However, quantitatively speaking, Star Trek is what you see in the shows. The types of stories that are told. The methods by which the stories are told, and all of the tangible elements that make it all up. I'm talking about the things which are evident in the shows, regardless of what aspect of Star Trek appeals to any given individual for whatever reason.
No developer can successfully deliver a qualitatively accurate Star Trek game. However, it can deliver a quantitatively accurate one. As it is now, Cryptic/PWE is not putting any effort into this. Everything they do of late is a poorly disguised gimmick to suck more money out of players' bank accounts. Yes. They are a business and they need to make money. Fine. I get that. But if they are going to bank on the Star Trek IP, then they should be doing the best they can to reflect the IP as accurately as possible. This game still has a subscription option. They should be doing what they originally sounded like they were going to do. Design their marketing model in such a way that people would be encouraged to subscribe for the most cost-effective way to get access to everything, while allowing those to just dabble or go in just so far with their investment to be able to do so. Now it doesn't matter whether we are subscribed or not. The game is designed to entice us into opening our wallets again and again... Not for vanity items or whatnot. But to simply be able to participate in Cryptic's idea of fun gameplay without being subjected to grindfest after grindfest.
Now it is their game. They can design it however they want. But speaking only for myself, if they want my money, then Star Trek Online needs to at least quantitatively be Star Trek, online.
"There can be no meeting of the minds between two parties
if both parties are not willing to meet in the middle."
-Ambassador Samuel J. Stone
if both parties are not willing to meet in the middle."
-Ambassador Samuel J. Stone
Post edited by sirsitsalot on
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This discussion has been closed.
Comments
What makes modern Star Trek - TNG, DS9, VOY - special is something a game cannot capture: the interpersonal relationships. TNG was never about exploration - in fact most of their episodes are dealing with KNOWN races, not making First Contact. But what they did was make the episodes about the crew. Worf did this, Data did that, Riker was cloned, Geordi was captured, Troi was a Tal'shiar, etc. You cannot really make your NPCs the focus of an MMO; an SPRPG, yes, but an MMO, no, because you have many people playing together with many different NPCs.
So when you say "make them like the show" you have to understand that they cannot, because most of the shows were about the crew, not the actual adventures.
And how would you know that? Are you a Cryptic employee?
I am probably the richest person in Europe. There... it has been said in a forum, and all you have is my word, so it must be true.
Your logic.
Should I just naturally assume that everything they say is a lie then?
When Geko gets married on the bridge of the Enterprise should we just assume he is not a Trek fan?
I tend to agree that one of star treks strengths has always been the interpersonal relationships
However, I can't agree with you that an MMO can't reflect that.
It could be done, provided there was a will to do it.
Love threads like this that complain yet give no examples or details about what should be done. Huge generalizations always work at fixing issues.
Indeed, to the OP i suggest the following
1) List the major problems you have (ie: why isnt it trek)
2) list what you want them to do about EACH problem (plz fix does not count unless its a big)
3) Very politely end the post (IE: thank you for keeping this game running, and for your time)
This may not get a response, but if everyone posted like that, devs would actually come back to the forums.
Yeah, there's a problem with that.
In order to get the interpersonal bit going, they're going to need to do one of a few things, which is a list of not-particularly-attractive options.
So I don't think this is a very viable approach.
That said, I do agree that we need a lot more involvement with BOffs - and with our own ships. I'm getting very tired of piloting some random ship Cryptic is trying to sell. As a note, this has done nothing to sell a single ship to me, though it's done much to ensure I'm not touching the Dyson destroyers with a ten foot pole.
I would suggest you consider trying to role-play with some of the missions. It's not as difficult as you think. You'll have to split your concentration, but you're a lot more likely to get a BOff crew with personalities you like than if they're provided pre-packaged by Cryptic, and therefore reviled by a lot of the playerbase.
Not impossible.
Straight forward? No, but not impossible.
We already know that mission givers use place holders.
"Go to planet wotsit [insert name, rank here] and scan stuff"
That allows stories or missions to be designed around boffs.
"Your first officer, [insert name, rank, species whatever here] is sent on an officer exchange program."
Mission revolves around receiving a distress call from the ship they're serving on.
And while there probably isn't the technology yet for the player to play as their boff, we can certainly design stories around [insert name here] where the player has to interact with them.
But that's just boffs.
Too many other NPCs are wasted.
Take the freighter captain from the training mission.
We may get a pop up whenever we call in the bank and stuff, but why not a later mission revisiting the Azura 2?
Because, ala the show, those interpersonal relationships aren't confined to crew.
Q, Harry Mudd, Lore spring to mind.
Would putting together a few missions like this be some work? Sure.
But impossible to create content that reinforces and relies upon our player characters relationship with recurring characters? Nope.
Just a failure of imagination and a bit too much listening to the 'itcantbedone' voices.
I was going to make a similar example, but you beat me to it. In essence, this would have pretty much been my point as well.
I do agree that they should make all the non-Boff NPCs more personal - and they could certainly throw more stories that direction. But that was a choice made for expediency 5 years ago. The LoR and new KDF missions are more personal, IMO. That might be a good sign for the Delta Rising material. Either way, STO is still an MMO.
The problem with that is everyone had a different view of what Star Trek is and what the emphasis should be.
I can bare the combat focus of the game because Deep Space 9 happens to me my favorite of the shows and I eat up everything Dominion War but I do recognized while very character heavy, DS9 was a war movie spread out over 7 years.
For me, TNG (and early parts of DS9 that were influenced directly by TNG) showed how stupidly the Federation acted. For example, I like the idea of the Prime Directive when applied to pre-warp races, but the if it weren't for Picard the Federation would have practically been willing to accept Romulan involvement in the Klingon Civil War and handing the Empire to the Romulans. Same thing with the Cardassians and the Federation willing to hand Bajor and the Wormhole over to them.
I'm not sure we want too much Voyager. I liked the premise, but Voyager turned the Borg into "the monster of the week" and gave us the episode "Threshold."
To sum it all up, "What is Trek" is a subjective matter. You cannot make a game and please everyone based on something that is subjective.
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
Some well made points there.
And I heartily agree that LoR really did make a lot of progress in this regard with the Romulan storyline in particular.
As for the issue of teaming vis a vis my suggested approach, also a good point.
However, we have a plethora of single player only missions. There's no reason these couldnt be classed among them.
It does seem to me though, that we're in a phase of the game where old decisions are being revisited.
Systems that have been in place a long time are getting revamped.
Several old missions have received facelifts.
The decision not to loop together more NPC stories could be revisited as well, imo.
I agree with you on a lot of the points here, with th major exception of one.
The proposed idea is not impossible.
Not trivial or easy, but not impossible.
If it's from cryptic, you should assume it's a lie... If it's from Geko, its more than likely a lie.
Also, There are people who get married on top of a mountain... That dosen't mean they are Yetis, or believe in them... Just that they are nerds.
Also, I've probably watched more Star Trek than anyone on the cryptic team... between the 4 years I've been unemployed watching ST over and over, watching Star Trek daily since I've been 3, and reading books and watching fan made Trek. Part of a top-modeling team for Star Trek Bridge Commander too.
Yet, I bet you or anyone else won't accept my word as an expert, yet the so called "developer", who is an expert in trolling customers and seems to like silly ideas (dinos with lasers?)... Him you trust being a specialist.
OMG!!! Who writes this stuff, lol, and why are you still here if you believe anything you just wrote in this thread?
I'm not saying STO couldn't be brought more into line with Star Trek, but really?
This is not accurate. We do watch Star Trek at lunch sometimes, but it's not every day. And we haven't done it in a while.
However, the majority of the team has, and does watch Star Trek. A lot of Star Trek.
So either they are watching Trek, or have a Trekiee in the basement locked up in chains.
Except Voyager was the worst Trek with the worst captain, terrible crew, horrid writing, and some bad races. Most of the voyager fan boys only like it because of 36 of DD er 7 of 9.
underlined top to bottom in list order.
1. star trek most would agree is about exploring the human condition, space exploration, peaceful contact, diplomacy, trade and occasionally a little action on the side.
2. tell us something that we dont already know of.
3. you got one hell of an entitlement claim you built up then fail by tripping yourself up but telling us the one thing that makes your entire arguement invalid and moot.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
One way to add in "Character" is to give us the option to select one or two character/personality traits for our BOFFs and then have those serve as prompts during missions to provide more interactivity.
Of course, the problem with that is that then they have to write a ton more dialogue and provide more branching storyline options which would just grind things to a halt as far as getting any story content. So that's not likely to happen.
No, the reality is that WE are the characters. We're the ones who are supposed to be Picard, and Data and Riker and all the rest. But most players just don't play like that (which is fine, not judging any playstyles here).
I think we also need to remember that Star Trek is sometimes at its best and most entertaining when the characters on the show were placed in really "un-Trek-like" environments and forced to react to it. So yes, Dino's with laserbeams can work in Star Trek in my opinion, because far stranger things have happened on the actual shows.
I'd be all for that, however let's remember good ol'DStahl's words: "STO first and foremost is a space combat simulation."
By definition, any game, whether it's card, board, computer, sport, etc., has algorithms that need to be repeated, therefore creating a learning curve. An MMO may call this repetitive content, which is usually based on one of the games core-features, in STO's case the combat system, mainly space, but also ground. Why? Cuz' it is a self-replenishing, "sport" like system. Interesting, and therefore complicated and detailed, NPC interaction, is not self-replenishing and has to be hand-crafted line by line. Although this is the actual quintessence of most Star Trek episodes and even movies, it can by definition never by the main feature of an endless game like a MMO. All you can realistically do, is "decorate" the game's core system (i.e. combat) with as many additional features, like dialogues, puzzles, etc., as possible given limited resources wrt to dev-time, corporate decisions, and technical limitations.
Try out Star Trek Unity, for instance. You might love that, however it's over after some hours of gameplay, because it does NOT have a self-replenishing game system.
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